A Second Republic senator and member of the 2014 National Conference, Dr. Junaid Mohammed, has blasted the Presidency for trying to distance itself from Mrs. Amina Zakari, a National Commissioner of the Independent National Electoral Commission, INEC, who, last Thursday, was named by the commission as its Chairman, Advisory Committee and Presidential Election Collation Centre Committee.
The People’s Democratic Party, PDP, and other opposition parties had called for the removal of Zakari, alleging that she was a niece of President Muhammadu Buhari, a claim the Presidency, through Malam Garba Shehu, the President’s Senior Special Assistant on Media and Publicity, roundly rubbished.
But in an interview Sunday Vanguard newspaper, Dr. Mohammed, a fierce protagonist of President Buhari, who recently caused a stir by declaring that Alhaji Atiku Abubakar, PDP presidential standard bearer, was not a substitute for the incumbent, knocked the bottom off the presidential rebuttal, describing it as “shameful”.
Zakari, the woman in the eye of the raging storm, had, on Saturday, on BBC Igbo service, washed herself clean of the roiling allegation, declaring that she was not a relation of the President.
“I am not his (Buhari) niece,” she told the BBC. “I am not his cousin. I was appointed to this same particular job by ex-President Goodluck Jonathan in 2010. Prior to that, I was appointed an A.S to former President Olusegun Obasanjo and I did my job perfectly.”
However, Dr. Junaid Mohammed took Zakari’s defence with a pinch of salt. “For those who do not know,” Mohammed began, “let it be known (and let me repeat it) that Buhari’s sister, who was married to a prominent Emir in Kazaure, in the present Jigawa State, gave birth to Amina. …It is doubtful if Buhari himself can say that Amina Zakari is not his niece. I can say, without any fear, that Buhari cannot deny his direct sibling.”
Still, Mohammed won’t let go. He said although Zakari was a pharmacist who had been working herself to the bones in several other places, “it was former President Goodluck Jonathan who nominated her as a National Commissioner to represent the North-West, with some input from then Congress for Progressive Change, CPC, presidential candidate, Maj. Gen. Muhammadu Buhari, at that time.”
Despite the roiling controversy, the newspaper said it had established that despite her new assignment and the yet-to-be-proved notion that she was the president’s niece, Zakari “would not be involved in any way with the collation of result of the presidential election in 2019, or any other result for that matter.”